Lying to protect “the big lie” of gun free zones

I really wish I didn’t have to write this post, but these execrable “journalists” covering the Arapahoe High School shooting are giving me little choice but to confront their deception head-on.

As we now know, the shooter yesterday in Centennial, CO, was an 18-year-old male. He was presumably angry with the school librarian (who was also the coach of the debate team). The shooter took the debate team very seriously, and there was some sort of change in his status on the team, though it remains unclear at the moment whether he was kicked off the team, suspended from it, or merely demoted.

In any event, the shooter entered the school screaming for the librarian-coach, who managed to escape. Two other students were injured, one of whom is in critical condition. Another was treated and released for minor injuries. The shooter then apparently attempted to set off some homemade incendiary devices to little effect before committing suicide with his shotgun.

Thomas Conrad, who had an economics class with the gunman, described him as a very opinionated Socialist.

By this morning, that description had been edited without notice by the Denver Post. It now reads:

Thomas Conrad, who had an economics class with Pierson, described him as very opinionated.

1984 is alive and well in Colorado, where “journalists” dare not let the idea of American socialism be linked to murder. It would be easy to go down a long list of murderous American socialist assassins and terrorists (perhaps readers could make a “game” of seeing how many they can name in the comments), but the whitewashing of his political beliefs is a sideshow.

The much more disturbing example of what George Orwell called Newspeak is a rewriting of the failure of another “gun free zone,” and the police model of rapid response to such an event.